Balanced SSFP (bSSFP) is of interest to a wide range of clinical applications, due to its unique T2/T1 contrast and fast imaging speed. However, the main limitation of bSSFP is the banding artifact resulting from its sensitivity to field inhomogeneity. A common approach for band reduction involves multiple measurements with different RF phase cycling [1], at the cost of lengthened total imaging time. Here, we present a novel time-efficient bSSFP banding reduction technique by utilizing simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) imaging with CAIPIRINHA (CAIPI-SMS) to acquire multiple phase-cycled images within the same imaging time of a single-band (SB) bSSFP scan. Effective band reduction is demonstrated in phantom, abdominal and brain imaging with SMS factor up to four.The proposed phase-cycled SMS imaging for bSSFP banding reduction exploits an important property of CAIPIRINHA [2], i.e., the phase modulation of the multiband (MB) excitation pulses not only results in a spatial shift along the phase encoding direction in image space, but also a shift in the bSSFP off-resonance profiles. Figure 1a shows the imaging strategy of the presented technique — interleaved CAIPI–SMS imaging with temporally modulated RF phase cycling, using a SMS factor of 3 as an example. Specifically, 3 slices are excited simultaneously with a spatial shift of FOV/3 (red), 0 (blue) and –FOV/3 (green) along the phase encoding direction, respectively, resulting in 2π/3, 0, -2π/3 shift in their off-resonance profiles (Fig. 1b). By performing modulated phase cycling in time, each slice location experiences 3 different phase cycling with 3 MB excitations, which can be subsequently combined for banding reduction. The total scan time of CAIPI-SMS bSSFP is the same as that of a standard banding prone bSSFP scan, excluding the time for acquiring reference images. The same scheme can be applied for other SMS factors. It is noted that the relatively large spacing between simultaneously excited slices allows high acceleration factors and dense slice sampling with a low g-factor penalty.Three (23±2 yo) and one (23 yo) healthy participant underwent brain and abdominal imaging on a 3T Siemens Prisma system, using a 32-ch head coil and 18-ch body/12-ch spinal array coil, respectively. Phantom imaging: 12 axial slices of a gel phantom (with a paperclip attached to generate susceptibility artifact) were acquired using interleaved CAIPI-SMS with SMS factor of 2 (with FOV/2 shift), 3 (with FOV/3 shift) and 4 (with FOV/4 shift), respectively. Voxel size=1.3x1.3x5mm3, TR/TE=4.06/2.03ms, FA=30º, bandwidth=555Hz/Px. The spacing within SMS was 90, 60 and 45mm for the SMS factor of 2, 3, and 4, respectively. Abdominal imaging: 3 axial slices were acquired in a 9s breath-hold scan with a SMS factor of 3 and a FOV/3 shift. FOV=380mm2, matrix=320x320, voxel size=1.2x1.2x5mm3, TR/TE=3.64/1.82ms, FA=19º. The slice spacing within SMS was 45mm. Brain imaging: imaging parameters were the same as phantom study. Additionally, 24 axial slices were acquired using a SMS factor of 4 without inter-slice gaps for whole-brain imaging. The slice spacing within SMS was 30mm. All aliased SMS slices were reconstructed using slice-GRAPPA [3] algorithm with a kernel size of 3x3. Phase cycled images were combined using both maximum intensity and sum of squares. To evaluate the effect of SMS factor on bSSFP banding reduction, both percent ripple [1] and SNR efficiency = SNR/g*sqrt(total scan time) [1] were quantified within the banding affected regions across all the SMS accelerated brain scans.Multiple phase-cycled CAIPI-SMS slices from the gel phantom are shown in Fig. 2. Individual un-aliased images indicate that different phase cycling leads to variation in banding behavior, e.g., shift in banding location. Banding reduction performance using CAIPI-SMS is comparable to that of standard RF phase cycling approach (data not shown). Phase-cycled bSSFP abdominal images acquired with SMS factor of 3 are displayed in Fig. 3. Banding artifact is suppressed effectively in both maximum intensity and sum-of-squares combined imaging slices (arrows). Figure 4a shows the sum-of-square-combined whole-brain bSSFP images with SMS-4 and FOV/4 CAIPI-shift. Within the same imaging time, the banding artifact in single-band bSSFP images (Fig. 4b) is successfully suppressed in CAIPI-SMS-4 combined images (Fig. 4a). Quantified percent ripple and SNR efficiency from brain imaging across SMS acceleration factor of 2, 3 and 4 are listed in Table 1. The percent ripple drops, while SNR efficiency increases with higher SMS factor. A time-efficient bSSFP banding suppression technique is presented using phase-cycled CAIPI-SMS imaging for abdominal and brain imaging. Compared to conventional phase cycling techniques, which requires multiple acquisitions, the proposed phase-cycled CAIPI-SMS bSSFP technique imposes minimal loss in SNR efficiency besides the potential g-factor penalty induced by the SMS acquisition.